Piezocatalysis: Can catalysts really dance?

Piezocatalysis is an emerging area of research that has the potential to enable new green advances in catalytic processes independent of energy sources such as light or electricity. However, research has mainly focused on the development of piezoelectric materials that exhibit certain catalytic behaviour, rather than on elucidating the fundamentals behind this new catalytic phenomenon. This review aims to highlight overseen aspects in piezocatalysis research that are common practice in other research areas such as general piezoelectricity, sonochemistry and electrochemistry. Factors that are generally overlooked but that would have a critical impact on piezocatalysis such as the nature of the mechanic field, its frequency and the redox potentials of the reactions involved will be briefly discussed.